Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/507

PENANCE 485 on the offender. The prophets, while dwelling much on the necessity of repentance, of a moral change in the sinner, are almost entirely silent as to any accompanying acts and observances of an ascetic nature ; and, though occasional references to prolonged fastings and to the wearing of sackcloth as penitential exercises are found, yet they appear as exceptional and spontaneous, and not as part of an accredited system, nor as enjoined by any authority external to the devotee or penitent himself. Even under the Talmudic code there is no organized system of penance. The three degrees of excommunica tion, niddui, cherem, and shammata, ascending from mere exclusion from the congregation for a month, through the stage of anathema, to that of public and ignominious expulsion from fellowship in Israel (and that at first irrevocably, though the penalty was afterwards relaxed), practically exhaust the code, since there are no formal provisions for inflicting other penalties, whatever voluntary observances may at any time have been superadded. The Christian theory of penance ultimately rests on the view that the Christian church is the precise analogue of the Jewish people under the elder dispensation. As the Jews were the one family on earth in direct covenant with God, so that it became necessary for all Gentiles who desired to be brought into the like relation to abandon their own proper nationality and to become Jews by adop tion, forsaking their former habits and associations together with their creed ; and as various offences against the law of Moses were punished with temporary or final exclusion from fellowship in the Hebrew polity ; so was it from a very early period in the Christian church. One marked difference between the Rabbinical and the Christian dis cipline is indeed visible from the first, that the former in volved the suspension or deprivation of civil rights, whereas the latter, in all the earlier centuries at any rate, was a purely spiritual penalty. But they are agreed in com bining two ideas, one wholly foreign (as already observed) to paganism, and the other but vaguely shadowed therein, the aim of healing the offender himself and the need of his making public satisfaction to the society whose rules he had broken, and which might suffer in reputation and influence by reason of his misconduct. It is this notion of satisfaction which has led to the extension of the word "penance" itself from its more restricted and legal meaning to its wider use as covering the whole range of ascetic practices. And, as it soon came to be accepted that the inward sorrow for sin would be attended with an outward token of that sorrow, involving pain or humilia tion in some form or other, there are four distinct stages in the ecclesiastical use of the word " pccnitentia," first, as denoting the change of mind due to sorrow for sin ; next, the external penalty attached to each offence ; thirdly, the discipline of the church in dealing with all spiritual offences ; and lastly, any piece of austerity practised with a religious motive ; and the fact of the Latin language having no doublets like the English " penitence " and " penance " to express the distinct though allied ideas of the mental attitude and the outward action has powerfully conditioned Latin theology and practice. 1 There is naturally but little to be found in the New Testament on the subject of discipline ; but the whole principle is provided for and anticipated in one saying of 1 The Greek word /j.erdvoia, which stands both for repentance and for the sacrament or mystery of penance, has undergone a singular degeneration of meaning in ecclesiastical language, being often used to denote an obeisance of head and body, because that gesture is one which was enjoined upon penitents as part of the outward expression of sorrow for sin. But this ambiguity has had no theological results ; because the penalty imposed in the confessional is not called peravoia., but tirm/mia, and thus no confusion can arise, especially as the context always shows clearly when fj.fra.voia. stands for a mere gesturo. Christ that which directs that he who neglects to hear the church as arbiter in a dispute shall be regarded as a heathen man and a publican, and which goes on to con fer upon the apostles the power of binding and loosing (Matt, xviii. 17, 18), words which they, with their Jewish experience and associations, must needs have interpreted as authorizing, and even enjoining, the infliction of pen alties, and notably that of excommunication, upon members of the new society. Accordingly, the leading example of such discipline, the case of the incestuous Corinthian, attests plainly some form of trial, a sentence of excom munication, some proof of repentance, and the consequent reconciliation and restoration of the offender (1 Cor. v. ; 2 Cor. ii. 6-10); and it is most probable that some such method was pursued in the sub-apostolic church, each case being dealt with locally, and on its separate merits, long- before any formal system or code came into existence. The penalties seem at first to have been very simple and lenient, leaving out of account the difficult problem of the phrase " delivering to Satan," twice found in this connexion (1 Cor. v. 5 ; 1 Tim. i. 20), which may mean merely relegating to heathen fellowship by exclusion from the society of Christians, but also may cover much more ground. Exclusion from the eucharist itself, exclusion from non-communicating attendance at the eucharist, and exclusion from all religious assemblies for even the minor offices of worship are the only censures discoverable in the earlier period, though it is not long before certain additional penalties accompanying these grades of separa tion begin to appear. The following broad rules govern all cases of penitential discipline in the ancient church. (1) Penance related only to baptized and communicant Christians. Even catechumens were not held capable of it, to say nothing of Jews or Pagans. (2) It was ex clusively spiritual, and in no way touched the civil con dition of the penitent, even after the conversion of the empire. (3) It was not compulsory, but spontaneous ; nay, so far was it from being imposed, that it had to be sought as a favour. Of course, where it was not so sought the excommunication of the offender remained in force, but this excommunication was not regarded as in itself a penance in the later use of that term. (4) The most usual rule allowed of penance but once. The relapsing offender had no second opportunity granted him. (5) It was always preceded by confession (e^oftoAoy^cris), a term which, however, even as early as Tertullian s time, was already extended to include, over and above the oral acknowledgment of guilt, the external acts of mortification accompanying it (De Pcen., c. 9). (6) There was a careful classification of the offences involving penance, and after a time a corresponding classification of penitents into certain fixed grades, through which it was in many cases necessary to pass, from the lowest to the highest, before receiving absolution and being restored to full communion. The case dealt with by St Paul establishes one point, that of the comparative brevity of the time of penance, even for very grave offences, since three years is the longest period which can have elapsed between the two epistles to the Corinthians ; whereas under the later system periods of fifteen and twenty years are not rarely to be found, and in some cases penance was for life, however protracted. The earlier method can be shown to have come into wide acceptance far within the 2d century, because it forms the subject of a charge made against the church by Tertullian in one of his Montanist treatises (De Pudicitia] ; and the more stringent discipline of the succeeding era appears to be due to the nearly simultaneous action of two causes, the great success which attended the persecution set on foot by the emperor Decius in 249, resulting as it did in a far larger propor-